Purchasing Behaviors: Sweeteners in the Bread Aisle

September 23, 2015

Various sweeteners are found in the food we eat every day, including items we might not associate with sweeteners such as bread, spaghetti sauce and milk. Many consumers aim to avoid certain sweeteners, such as sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), among others. In certain products, where consumers may not be anticipating the use of sweeteners, they may not be reading the ingredient labels as carefully.

Recent research shows that when it comes to bread, today’s shoppers often claim to avoid specific sweeteners, but their purchasing behavior when choosing their bread says otherwise. It’s widely recognized that consumers have become more mindful in recent years, weighing sweeteners as well as a myriad of other factors when they make food purchases. However, a recent study shows that actual bread purchases are not impacted by this growing trend towards sweetener avoidance.

Sweetener360, commissioned by the Corn Refiners Association, is an annual research study completed in part by Nielsen and Mintel Consulting. The study compared 15,000 consumers’ attitudes and their buying behavior, revealing a stark contrast between what consumers are saying and what they’re doing.

Generally speaking, participants claimed to avoid sugar­sweetened breads far more than breads sweetened with HFCS. However, when the buying pool was broken into six segments of consumers, ranging from no health worries to diabetics and dieters, four of those segments bought HFCS-sweetened breads slightly more than sugar­sweetened bread. Two segments actually purchased more sugar­sweetened breads than HFCS, despite reporting that they avoided sugar­sweetened breads. Even the three most health conscious of the segments bought more than their theoretical share of the bread category total, and accounted for more than half of HFCS­sweetened bread buys.